


a cold water among broken reeds.

by Melkoring



Category: Greek Tragedy, Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, idk i just wanted to write crap about queer greeks tbh, smut only implied bc i cant write that shit okay i just cant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 20:25:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5104601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melkoring/pseuds/Melkoring
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Orestes is not with Electra when Pylades finds him.</p><p>Orestes is hardly in his own mind when Pylades finds him.</p><p> </p><p>(Set after Clytemnestra's death and before Orestes' departure.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	a cold water among broken reeds.

**Author's Note:**

> I found this in my docs from like a year ago and decided to finish this trash up, because why not?? it was fun to switch up my writing style a bit as well. idk i just wanted to write some pylades/orestes because there is a severe lack of fic. Sorry for any inaccuracies, I didn't have my copy of the play with me to check. probably some liberties taken, since i studied a couple of versions of the play, along with some other research, so.. well you know how ancient myths go, they’re as jumbled as a toddler shaking a box of 'Mouse Trap' that was bought for 50p at a carboot sale, and at this point all the details are jumbled in my head.
> 
> ANYWAY my tumblr is queerglorfindel.tumblr.com if y'all wanna chat about queer greeks.
> 
> title taken from Edward Thomas' poem 'Rain', mostly because when I originally wrote this, i had been reading a lot of his poetry.

Orestes is not with Electra when Pylades finds him.

Orestes is hardly in his own mind when Pylades finds him.

He has Electra's hand and Orestes’ heart, and Clytaemnestra’s blood stained upon his brow and his palms - he'd say, by now, they were practically family, if family did not already tie them together, and if Orestes were not already raised by his side. And if Orestes’ family’s blood had not been spilled by his own hand, that is.

“Why do I feel this way?” Orestes asks, and he no longer sounds like the prowling wolf Pylades knows him as, who grew up at his side, pushed together to be brothers and falling together as something more.

“ _Love?_ ” Pylades wants to suggest, almost humorously, but he knows it is not the answer that Orestes is looking for, and he knows that the question he wants to answer so profoundly with the same word is not the one that Orestes asks.

“She was your mother,” Pylades chooses to remind him instead. He knows Orestes may not like to hear it, but he also knows it is what Orestes wants to hear, and needs to hear. He needs to justify his sins, but he also needs to justify his regret; to Pylades and mostly to himself. “She was your mother; that must mean something to you.”

“She was vile,” Orestes spits, and the venom on his tongue and coursing through his words sour the back of Pylades’ throat. He can taste this venom on Orestes’ tongue when he kisses him, and he tries to draw it out with his lips as one would with a poisoned wound. But it is there still when Orestes speaks again. “She was foul, and unholy, and she murdered my father.” His words are strangled with a sob and his voice shatters. “And I miss that I never got to know her as my mother. I miss that of them both. I am vile, and foul, and unholy, and I murdered my mother.”

Pylades kisses him again, and this time it is not the poisonous words he tries to suck from Orestes’ mouth, but the saltiness of tears wrecking the roses of his beautiful cheeks, like wild rain. Pylades kisses him again, and again, and then he wishes he had not kissed him because now he knows - as he always knows - that he will never want to stop. But Orestes is hurt, and when Orestes’ heart aches as does that of Pylades; for Orestes holds Pylades’ heart in his hands as ably as he holds his sword.

Orestes is hurt, and that is a more important matter for Pylades to attend to, than kissing his lips until they bruise.

“And of Aegisthus?” Pylades hardly wants to speak the man's name for fear of breaking Orestes further. Part of him fears it may already be too late, but he quells it, slays it, like the sword in Orestes' hand driving through the the tender stomach that once bore him as a babe, so long ago.

Pylades has more faith in Orestes than that.

“Aegisthus can rot,” Orestes says, he screams, and his cheeks stain with fresh tears. “The gods can tear him limb from limb, for all I care, if those were our ways to treat the dead, and I half wish they were. I would wish Hades or Penelope to have their way with him, but it would be drawing on a kindness I know I do not feel for him. He can _rot_. His blood can drip from my fingers and I will treasure it.”

“As will I,” Pylades says. He lifts Orestes’ now-cleaned and oiled hands to his lips and traces their sculpted form with his tongue, remembering each familiar knuckle and the salt of Orestes’ skin like they were the back of his own hands. “I will devour it, should you ask me.”

They kiss again. And again, and again, and Pylades forgets the taste of figs and of honey, for the taste of his Orestes overwhelms all else.

“You're coming with me, right?” Orestes asks the freckles on Pylades' skin, where his nose and lips press against and the words reverberate through into Pylades' bones. They can’t stay here. Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra might have run the House of Atreus with the iron fist of a tyrant, but there would still be consequences to their murder. Clytaemnestra was tied to him and Electra by blood, and cutting those ties would mean facing those very consequences. The only choice was to run. It was what the Dioscori had told them.

Pylades traces constellations onto the bare, bronzed canvas of Orestes' back - magnificent heroes, fantastic beasts, appalling monsters. Perhaps one day, the gods will carry Orestes' spirit in their vast hands and scatter him across the night sky. Perhaps he will pockmark the dark like fireflies dancing, dancing across the sky with Orion and Pegasus. Pylades would like that.

He would like it better if they were strung across the stars in each other's arms, however. But now they would be chased across sea and dirt, golden fire as the blood in their veins and fearsome Tauris on the horizon, the Erinyes clawing at the backs of their feet like the poisoned arrow in famed Achilles' heel. But they would not trip and fall: At least, Orestes would not, for Pylades would be there beneath him before the stones could graze his flesh and would catch him, cradle him, carry him to Tauris if he must.

Pylades swallows, and with it swallows down his love and his loyalty and his pain. He nods, plain and simple, and it is more than enough; and although Orestes has his eyes squeezed shut, he knows Pylades' answer before he even had to ask. But fear had numbed his mind and left him as a cold water among broken reeds. The reassurance was all he needed.

Pylades takes Orestes in his arms, pulling him closer, gasping, as though Orestes is the very air he needs to breathe.

When Pylades is with him, Orestes feels less like Atlas, forced to shoulder the weight of the sky on his shoulders.

When Pylades is with him, he is Hermes, with wings on his feet and the wind on his back, the boundaries between mortal and divine as pliable as wax in his fingers.

He is Apollo, with the sun in the palm of one hand and music notes woven like fresh linen in the other, prophecies as easy as poetry on his tongue.

He is Orestes, son of Agamemnon, with his mother’s blood on his hands, and his father’s blood in his veins, guileful Electra at his side, devoted Pylades in his heart. He needs not ambrosia to feel divine. Not with him.

The sun is dipping below the dusty horizon line, and their hands meet on each others skin. The light is low but, when Pylades looks up, it’s nothing compared to the light in Orestes’ eyes and the fire in his belly as Orestes hands out kisses to him as though they were as common as water, but as precious as gold.

The sky is a tapestry of red and gold thread by the time they are breathless and tangled. Orestes’ head rests in the crook of Pylades’ neck, and Pylades pretends, for Orestes’ sake, that he does not notice the trickle of tears that soak into his skin. He runs a hand across the patchwork of scars decorating Orestes’ skin, and thinks about how he could trace each silver sliver with his lips, how he has done in the past.

“What of Electra?” Pylades asks. This too, he knows. Part of him only wants to hear Orestes’ voice again.

Orestes shifts in his arms. “You know what,” he says, and as his words spill with the truth, he runs his lips across the line of Pylades' jaw, trying to contain them, or soften them, at least. But Pylades sighs and smiles, and his fingers find his favourite curls blanketing Orestes' brow. Orestes continues, despite this, despite the slumber calling to him through the familiar strokes of Pylades’ fingers across his scalp: “The Dioscori have spoken. She is to be your wife, and I know you will take care of her, as you have taken care of me.”

“She is a good woman,” Pylades adds, and there is only a touch of bitterness to the otherwise sincerity of his laughter. “She is smart. She will more than likely end up having to take of me, like a lioness to her fawning cubs.”

Orestes sighs too, revelling in the bounce of Pylades’ chest as he laughs, and the warmth of his skin, and the golden light from his everything. He wants to speak, to sing, to cry out with Pylades under his calloused palms and lips and thighs: the deed has been done, as Apollo commanded. Their father’s murderers, his mother and Aegisthus, are dead at his and his sister’s hands. The murder of Agamemnon, son of Atreus, King of Argos, has been avenged and his memory is honoured.

For that, surely they should rejoice?

But when he searches, he finds his words lost. His mind is filled only with the white stare of his mother's corpse, the coldness of her hands that caressed Aegisthus, frozen even while as her wretched heart still beat precious, wasted life-blood through her veins.

He can't hate her. He can hate her, but he can't. Apollo surely bids he should, and Zeus knows he could, but he can't.

Not quite.

Orestes likes the bags under his eyes, one of the many gifts Pylades bestows upon him, from keeping him up until beautiful Dawn spreads her robes over the land.

He doesn’t like the sleepless nights to come, where Clytaemnestra’s hollow eyes haunt his dreams while he sleeps, and the Erinyes hunt his shadow while he wakes.

Orestes likes the purples and reds and blues that Pylades’ lips leave upon his skin, scoring his name across his back, his throat, his thighs, every piece of flesh that Orestes leaves bare to the sun, he leaves bare to Pylades as well, twice over even.

He doesn’t like the taint of Clytaemnestra’s blood on the tips of his fingers and the memory of it pooling at his feet, or the roughness of the path out of Argos under the soles of his feet, grating at his every step.

Pylades likes Orestes. There is nothing about Orestes he does not dote on. He likes the curve of his back, and the scars on his chest, and the umber of evening reflected in the oil on his skin. The edge to his sword and the lack of one to his voice.

And seeing Orestes so broken, so shameful, like a cold water among broken reeds: this, he does not like.


End file.
